$650 Weight Loss Challenge: Day 20/120 Training a the Chest Press Machines
June 12, 2011 Posted by Tyler CruzA few weeks ago, I started my weight loss challenge against Paul Piotrowski.
As a quick recap, we each must lose 14% of our starting body weight (which works out to 30 pounds each) within 4 months (120 days). If one of us doesn’t make it, then he will have to pay the other $650. If neither of us make it, then we will donate $650 to the BCSPCA.
This is the first update I’ve made since the challenge began 20 days ago. I planned on doing an update every 7-10 days or so, but was pretty busy the past few weeks working on my new site.
Below is a line graph comparing my weight loss progress alongside Paul’s:
As you can see, Paul had a huge loss overnight once the challenge began. However, I’m pretty sure that this is because Paul ate a lot on the day of the first weigh-in (for this very reason).
I like the way that my line is slowly decreasing, and I especially like the way that Paul’s line is all out of wack.
Below is all the numerical data so far, for those who may be interested:
Please note, however, that all of the weigh-in’s apart from the initial one, are us wearing lighter clothes than what we weighed ourselves in. For example, I’m usually wearing shorts and am not holding my camera when I weigh-in, which probably equates to a total of roughly 1 pound. We will, of course, wear the exact same clothes that we originally weighed in, at the final weigh-in.
The Minimum Pace is taking the average amount of weight we need to lose each day (which works out to 0.25 lbs.) over 120 days in order to just barely lose 30 pounds, multiplied by the number of days so far.
The Real vs Min. Pace is the difference between our current weight loss and the Minimum Pace.
I’m just a tad behind schedule (roughly 2-3 days) to meet my minimum pace. However, Paul is already quite a bit behind schedule… around 9 days. Again, this is basing things off an average daily weight loss of 0.25 pounds.
Our First Weight Loss Sponsor
While I made the graph and chart above by using Excel, there is actually a free web tool out there called Healthy Weight Calculator that will do all of this for you.
All you do is create a profile and then enter your basic health details and target weight, and update your weight once a week. It will then graph your progress over time and estimate how many calories you need to be consuming a day, etc. A tdee calculator can also help refine these estimates, giving you a more personalized approach to achieving your weight and fitness goals.
My profile can be seen here. Paul’s can be seen here. I love how he messed up when creating his profile and it shows his avatar and profile as a woman, and he can’t change it:
It’s a pretty neat site, perfect for what Paul and I are doing. However, it’s still in Alpha stage so it has a number of bugs and also needs new features.
For example, I forgot my password and there is no Forgot Password feature, so I was unable to log in to update my stats for this update:
Also, right now you can only update your weight per week, instead of per day. I really want to be able to update per day.
The owner said he will try to add these suggestions soon.
In addition, HealthyWeightCalc.com has agreed to sponsor both Paul and I by awarding us $100 each if we make the challenge.
That’s just one more incentive to lose the weight 🙂
My Efforts
As soon as this weight loss challenge started, I completely changed what I was eating.
I’m on a no fast food/restaurant ban as well as anything high in calories. I’m also eating a ton more vegetables and fruit than before, and am drinking more water as well.
I’m also doing daily push-ups and crunches, as well as walking every day. I’m still going to badminton twice a week as well which is a real cardio workout.
During the first week and a half of the challenge, I wasn’t able to do anything physical other than my daily walk, as I had pulled a stomach muscle (or something like that) during a jump smash at badminton which hurt even when I would sit down or get up.
Here are a couple of photos of the types of foods I’m eating now:
I normally hate vegetarian-anything, but there’s this vegetable sandwich at a grocery store here that I tried about a year ago, and was floored at how good it was (surprisingly). I also discovered kewpie mayo and will choose it over regular mayo.
I bought another one when this challenge started so that I could study it. I then bought the proper ingredients and was able to duplicate it nearly exactly. I made a ton of these vegetable sandwiches during my first week.
They do have a thin slice of cheese, a tiny dash of salt and pepper on the tomatoes, and a light-cream cheese spread on them, but there’s brown bread, tomatoes, cucumbers, and lettuce there, so it’s a good choice I think. Delicious and healthy… about 300 calories.
Paul’s Efforts
Paul appears to be putting a large percentage of his weight loss focus on spirituality and mindset this year.
He’s done some exercise here and there, but it doesn’t appear to be consistent from what I’ve heard from talking to him so far.
The biggest surprise to me is that Paul has been continuing to eat a ton of really unhealthy fast food ever since the challenge started! I’m talking about roughly an average of once a day!
KFC, Burger King, Domino’s – you name it, Paul ate it.
In fact, you could almost superimpose Paul’s face onto the image below and believe it was him:
Below are a couple of actual images of some of the food that Paul was eating that he sent to my phone:
All you can eat Fish and Chips (6 pieces there):
Huge heavy pastas:
Oh, and that guy with the 2 dozen deep fried donuts? That was Paul:
What is he doing?!?! Does he want to pay me $650?
If he manages to lose all the weight while continuing to eat like this, I’ll be pissed 🙂
27 Responses to “$650 Weight Loss Challenge: Day 20/120 Training a the Chest Press Machines”
Fight on, do not give up, you will lose weight with your diet, it’s just your body trying to conserve power and energy. It will be released soon and the pounds will fall.
The difference in weight between my weigh-in weight and my second weight is due to the fact that I always weigh more in the evening after dinner (10pm weigh-in) compared to my morning weight. On average I find that I wake up weighing about 1lbs lighter than going to bed. Also, my morning weight on Day 1 and every day after does NOT include the 1lbs extra for my weight-in clothes and camera.
So really I have to add 2lbs to my morning weights for it to accurately compare to my starting weight of 216. Of course on the final day I will be weighing myself at night and in my weigh-in clothes so it won’t matter.
Ahh, those donuts were really good!!!
You guys are off to a great start.
Ignoring the weigh-in shenanigans and just using the 2nd day as a starting point, here are the true totals:
Cupcake: gained 0.8 lbs
Tyler: lost 3.2 lbs
(And you’re 5′ 10″ only if you’re standing on six inches of used pie plates, Cupcake. Nice try.)
That’s actually not too bad, Tyler, and at least you’re making an effort diet-wise. Good work on reverse-engineering that complex cheese, tomato, and lettuce sandwich from the store; that must have taken days to work out.
As far as poor Cupcake, he’s going to check in at a true 216 lbs if he keeps up the weight gain over the duration of the “weight loss” challenge.
Sorry to keep replying to Cupcake here but I tried to access his site, took a nap, worked out, knocked out some work, but by the time it finally loaded 6 hours later it was bedtime.
Hahahah… you’re hilarious. Now I’m even lying about my height eh? Want to make a $1,000 bet on that?
Here’s what’s funny…
(1) You’re no longer bitching about Tyler Cruz wasting your time posting weight loss posts.
(2) You’re now actually cheering him on.
Tyler, let’s get those “Team Tyler” shirts printed, LeSigh wants to buy one.
My job here is done.
Cupcake, it’s a “weight loss” challenge.
Tyler has lost weight. He’s exercising more and has changed his diet. He gets kudos.
You’ve gained weight and done nothing but sit around wishing you weren’t a fatty, pigging out on doughnuts. You don’t get any kudos.
You may think I’m always negative but that’s because 99% of what you two do are epic fails.
Stop failing so badly and I’ll cheer you on as well.
[…] Tyler just posted a progress update on his site as well. He’s lost 4.4lbs so far. Check it out here if you’d like. […]
LeSigh = obese jealous stalker
lol
HealthyWeightCalc.com could use some design work, but happy to see you have a sponsor. Another $100 can’t hurt 🙂
Hey, inspired by Tyler even I started my own weight loss expedition 1 week ago and even though it seems I have lost a couple of pounds (visually) my weight remained the same, maybe coz I have gained some height.
Spirituality and mindset? Paul is still eating the same crap, you call that mindset?
And I’m unsure what spirituality has to do with any of this… if you can’t even do the basics right.
Couldn’t Paul just reality shift to some universe where weight loss pills really do work? (Paul talks about alternate realities on his blog and how he shifted to another one at one time to get a table in a restaurant…)
If your belief is that long-term weight loss is a result of only two things – (1) Diet and (2) Exercise, then you are right that I haven’t done much yet.
My belief is that until you get things aligned spiritually / mentally, then nothing you do in the physical world matters – including diet / exercise.
I will be explaining more on my Blog throughout the challenge since spirituality is not really a topic Tyler dives into.
Also to address your question regarding parallel universes – the reality you see around you reflects your current beliefs. So if you believe that weight loss pills don’t work (as do I in this parallel) then we will not be aware/see the Paul that shifted into that reality where they do. You’re stuck with me… the version of Paul that reflects your beliefs. 🙂
Thats funny that Paul seems to not be doing his part to lose the weight, but he might be trying to sike you out as well.
Hahahahahaha, he has a woman graphic on his profile. Man, I was laughing so hard when I saw that.
Let’s just hope he doesn’t lose all that weight while eating donuts – because you might go catastrophic. Putting bad photos on your site, giving us viruses and going downhill real quick. We wouldn’t want that at all Tyler – so take care of yourself. 😉
I actually created my profile properly as male the first time, but had to re-create it to change my activity level settings as there is no way to edit the existing plan yet.
When I re-created it the 2nd time it defaulted to female and once again I couldn’t edit the plan as there is no edit button yet. They are putting in the ability to edit your plan settings, but for now they changed my profile manually.
So I’m not showing as female anymore: http://www.healthyweightcalc.com/tracker/paulymath
It was rather funny though. 🙂
Tyler laughed so hard he caused a small earthquake on Vancouver Island.
-Paul
You were laughing so hard when you saw that? Wow, you really need to get a life
This is really interesting…. and I really want to see you get pissed, Tyler! 🙂
And of course, congrats on getting your first sponsor! – Who wants to sponsor me, I also want to hold some contest!
Keep it up man!!!
Good luck man keep it up!!!
Wow! It is a great challenge to one self to loss weight. It takes a lot of discipline, and abstaining to make a decision to loss weight. Congratulations Tyler! The effort is rewarding… 🙂
Keep going it seems that you are winning!
Good stuff. Im also trying to lose weight. Stay away from oils, carbs and stuff like this. I want to lose some belly fat.
First i want to say, that i respect u guys for what u are doing here.
It´s always hard to lose some weight but it´s easier if you got help -or as in your case – a competion.
I wish you both best of luck and hope that you you the endurance to go through everything until the end =)
Thanks! Appreciate the support.
-Paul
[…] Cruz gives us his first update on the weight loss challenge he’s participating in with Paul Piotrowski. Thus far, Tyler has the upper hand, but he still […]
Wow Tyler you are going very Good..Just 25.6 Lbs left…
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